Interface Articles

The interface I chose was www.yahoo.com The interface gives you an opportunity. As the aritcle Politics of Interface stated, "map the virtual world as a desktop--constructing virtual reality, by association, in terms of corporate culture and the values of professionalism." This is how the interface I looked at was set up. It was a professional desktop that was obviously used in our culture. Based on the initial interface, the software expects you to make decisions. The entire page is one link after another, and it is up to you which one to click. The software also excepts you to know English. Icons that are conveniently across interfaces are toolbars,search engines, and help buttons. Even ads and pictures are across many interfaces. Icons that are not conveniently across interfaces are small icons or pictures of what the words are describing. Many toolbars have these, but many interfaces do not. Since most interfaces only have English as the possible language, I think icons would be useful for non-English speaking people to understand what the words mean. Symbols can help represent words.
I would make this interface less busy. There are so many links and buttons that I feel it becomes overwhelming. Too much of something is not always necessarily a good thing. The page is so busy that it could drive people away. It becomes confusing when there is so much to pick from. I would customize a search engine like they did. By putting it at the top, dead center, it makes the page easier to navigate and understand. I would customize the email link. Many people go to this site primarily to check emails, so I would make that more prominent on the page. People are going to be annoyed if they have to search around for this link. I would also customize the toolbar. The font size on the toolbar is different for each word, which I think looks tacky. It is almost insulting in a way, implying that some are more important than others. So, I would make all the tools the same shape and size. The interface I chose had so many functions and features that I would probably not add any more, I would maybe take some away. I think there are too many ads on the page. Ads make the page looked cluttered and unprofessional.
The Politics of the Interface article really made me think about how websites can be directed towards one specific group of people. If many people cannot even read major, prominent webpages, such as yahoo, because it is in a different language is that fair? It seems like many groups of people are deliberately being left out.
The Eat Me, Drink Me, Push Me article was really informative to me. I had no prior knowledge about interfaces, I did not even know what they were, so it was interesting to see the different categories of interfaces. By looking at the different ways in which they are constucted, you can get a good idea of what you want yours to look like. It was interesting to see the transformation from page to website.